P3P has been developed by privacy adovactes and several companies in conjunction with the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) in response to a growing concern by many users over privacy issues.

Users are concerned in particular about Web sites that collect information without a user's knowledge or permission. If the depolyment of P3P is successful (it is to be rolled out at the end of 2000) Web site designers will have the option of incorporating the technology into their sites. Many sites already display a privacy policy howerver presently you have no way or knowing whether the site adheres to that policy. With P3P the policy would be coded in XML so that it can be read by an appropriately equiped browser. The browser would have the "intelligence" (through an agent) to alert the user to any site that follows data collection practices that go beyond the boundaries of personally defined limits.

If P3P is adopted then those sites not having it may end up being blacklisted by users or at least less trusted and therefore less used. Critics have argued that P3P lacks teeth, certainly it does not prevent sites gathering "unapproved" data. It does however at least warn the user about what is happening and therefore gives the user a choice. Not a panacea but at least a start!

Future development may go a step further and incorporate the technology into Search Engines these would then only find sites within the limits of predefined policies.

Designers beware. You should be thinking of these issues now.

July 2000